Wednesday, March 30, 2016

MMP for Canada

The grandfather of Canadian
proportional representation models with compensatory MPs (known as MMP) is the
2004 Report of the Law Commission of Canada: “Voting Counts: Electoral
Reform for Canada”

The Law Commission recommended a mixed
member proportional system, like Scotland's and Germany's. We still elect local MPs as the majority of MPs. The vast swaths of voters who are denied their preferred MP
by the single-MP riding elections
elect regional MPs to top up the local results: every vote counts. The total
MPs match the vote share in the region. The government will be accountable
to MPs reflecting a true majority of voters. See MMP Made Easy.

The
Law Commission's model has one vital
improvement on the Scottish model’s regional lists. Based on the feedback the
received during their consultation process, they found many Canadian voters
would like to vote for a specific
regional candidate and hold them accountable. See:

With
your first vote, you help elect a local MP as we do today. With the second, you
also help elect a few regional MPs: it’s proportional. You can cast a
personal vote for the regional candidate you prefer: it’s personal. See:

Each
party would hold regional nomination meetings and/or vote online to nominate
their regional candidates. These would often be the same people nominated
locally, plus a few additional regional candidates. The meeting would decide
what rank order each would have on the regional ballot. But then voters in the
region would have the final choice. See:

How
would regional MPs operate? Most regional MPs would each cover several ridings.
Take Saskatchewan as an example. On the votes cast in October 2015, Liberal
voters in Saskatchewan would have elected two additional regional MPs. They
might be based in Saskatoon, Prince Albert, or Regina, but they would likely
have additional offices in North Battleford, or Yorkton, or Swift Current, and
perhaps elsewhere, just as MP Robert Kitchen has offices in Estevan,
Weyburn and Moosomin. This is just the way it’s done in Scotland, where
two regional MPs from a party will normally split the region between them for
constituency service purposes, and hold office hours rotating across their
region or their part of it. See:

Local MPs become more
independent

With
two votes, you can vote for the party you want in government. And you can also
vote for the local candidate you like best regardless of party, without hurting
your party, since it's the second (regional) ballot that determines the party
make-up of the legislature. About 32% of voters split their ballots this way in
New Zealand with a similar system.

This
makes it easier for local MPs to get the support of people of all political
stripes. They can earn support for their constituency-representation
credentials, not just for their party. This boosts the kind of support MPs
bring with them into the House of Commons, thus strengthening their
independence.

Many MMP variations
exist. The UK’s Jenkins Commission recommendeda preferential ballot to elect the local MP, and a more moderate
version with local regions averaging only eight MPs, more accountable, less
proportional. See:

Why
closed lists would be rejected in Canada was accurately predicted by the
Jenkins Commission in the UK: they said additional members locally anchored
are “more easily assimilable into
the political culture and indeed the Parliamentary system than would be a flock
of unattached birds clouding the sky and wheeling under central party
directions.” The 2007 Ontario model which failed to win support in a
referendum had closed province-wide lists, like the P.E.I. model similarly
rejected. See:

Since
the number of MPs from each province would not change, no constitutional
amendment is required. See:

When
Sweden changed from closed list to flexible list, some women feared male
backlash would result in women being moved down the list. As it turned out,
more women were moved up than down. Similarly, many Canadian voters might jump
at the chance to vote for a good female regional candidate, especially if their
party had nominated a man for the local seat. See:

About Me

Although I am a member of Fair Vote Canada's Council at the federal level, the views expressed on this blog are my own.
I have been a lawyer since 1971, an elected school trustee from 1982 to 1994, past chair of the Board of the Northumberland Community Legal Centre, and so on.